It’s the time of year for people’s best-of roundups. Like last year I wanted to recognize stuff that meant a lot to my photography through 2024. And, this year, I’ve also added a short list of hopes for stuff in 2025!

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Photography Stuff I Used

Best Technology of 2024

The big change this year? I pretty well completely pivoted to my Leica Q2 and with only rare exceptions did I use the Ricoh GR IIIx or my iPhone 14 Pro. When I bought the Q2 it was, in part, to be able to capture images at night where there was little light. I’ve made images under these conditions that I’m happy with and I’ve come to learn how to better use the 28mm focal range. At this point I’ve created well over ten thousand frames over the year.¹

I upgraded to the 11” iPad Pro (2024) and definitely appreciate how light the device is, and how vibrant the screen is. I continue to use an iPad Mini for most of my actual reading but write a lot of blog posts on the iPad Pro and do all my photo editing on it.

When I take my photowalks I’m always listening to a podcast or music on my AirPod Pros. However I’ve long had an issue with finding tips that best fit my ears; the ones in the box always slip out. I recently learned about, and bought, the SpinFit CP1025 (S/SS) and they’ve been game changing. I get a perfect fit and the AirPods stay in my ears. Highly recommend them!

Best Services I Paid For

I continue to post images to Glass each day. I’m still disappointed with their AI search, and especially disappointed that landscape viewing on the iPad has now been broken for about a year.² Still, it’s a terrific community and a good place to post images regularly.

Apple One is key to my data management strategy. I’m still under the 2TB that is provided as part of the subscription though, with my current data use, I suspect that in 3-5 years I’ll need to expand that 2TB storage limit.

Lastly, while I’ve watched less photography YouTube I continue to appreciate YouTube Premium. It’s still about the most regularly used subscription service that I use on a regular basis.

Best Apps

Have I changed the apps that I rely on regularly since 2023?

Nope.

And so my best apps of 2024 include:

• Glass: I use to share my images on a daily basis.
• Geotags Photos Pro and Geotags Photo Tagger: I use to add geotags to my images.
• Reeder Classic: To follow various photography blogs.
• Apple Podcasts app: I use this to listen to photography podcasts while on my weekly photowalks.
• Apple News: To read photography magazines and websites that otherwise would be paywalled.
• Apple Photos: Used to edit and store all my images. I don’t love the iOS version of the application but it is what it is.

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Stuff I Made

Writing

• Sharing Photographs, and Photography, with Others and Growing as a Photographer: Despite being pretty used to being in the public eye as a result of my day job it’s different to expose myself when sharing the images that I make. Those images, if read carefully, reveal some elements of myself that I showcase less often, and this is made even revelatory when producing and sharing physical items to people I respect or submitting digital images to competitions. Just talking about that experience was liberating and reaffirmed that I am, slowly, growing as a photographer.
• Accidentally Discovered Street Photos: Imagine my surprise when, after opening my used copy of Conversations: With Contemporary Photographers a strip of exposed Kodak 100TX film fell out! I used a free app to enlarge some of the images and while my efforts weren’t spectacular it did result in seeing — and sharing — some images from an earlier time.
• 10 Tips for Starting to Photograph on the Street: I regularly read and view content that is meant to help new photographers get comfortable on the streets. Much of that content is good but is directed towards a certain kind of concern, and way of behaving, on the streets (e.g., Zone focus! Shoot from the hip! Be invisible!). I think that my 10 tips are for people like me who are interested in making street photos but are shy about even being seeing with a camera. Really, this is a blog written for myself which, if I’d read it 10 years ago, would have given me a clearer sense of what I could do to develop my confidence and skills.
• Nuit Blanche, 2024: I’ve been attending Nuit Blanche in Toronto, an annual art festival that runs for a single day from sundown to sunup, for many years. I always make photographs during it but, at the same time, have been challenged by using a smaller APS-C sensor camera. I was both pleased in the art that I experienced this year as well as the ability of the Leica Q2 to capture images more like how I wanted them due to its lens and sensor size.

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Stuff I Read

Best Photography Books and Magazines

• Metropolis: I’ve followed Alan’s work for years and appreciate how stark his imagery is and his absolute attention to form. His images carefully consider what is absolutely needed to communicate his vision and no more.
• Conversations: With Contemporary Photographers: This was probably the most important book about photography that I read this year. I’m, personally, interested in thinking more deeply about the ontology of photography and what it is and is not. The photographers interviewed in the book provided a range of interpretations of what photography is, and means, for each of them, and I benefitted tremendously from their thoughts on the medium as one which controls time and, also, the role of time in their own creative activities.
• Framelines: The team behind Framelines improve the magazine with every issue. From enhancements to the printing, imagery, interviews and just shipping, this is an instant purchase each time they come out with new issues. I particularly appreciate how they celebrate new and emerging photographers from around the world and platform those who, otherwise, I’d be entirely unaware of.
• André Kertész: Sixty Years of Photography: This book is a gift to photographers and the image-viewing public more broadly. Published back in 1978 it catalogues Kertéz’s photographic history. It is when we look at images like this that it is apparent how much you can do with black and white images that are focused on the forms across a frame, and also how having decades of images enable a playfulness between pages so that works from different decades can speak to one another and create a perception of continuity across time and space. If you are committed to street images, black and white images, or just seeing how history unfolded over sixty years, then this book is a must see.
• The Pleasure of Seeing: Conversations with Joel Meyerowitz on sixty years in the life of photography: Joel is, of course, a (still living) legend and has a number of different monographs under his name. This book is a little different because it explores his thought process across the different phases or eras of his photography. Now, if you’ve actively listened to his talks, interviews, podcasts, and so forth over the past decades many of the messages he communicates will be familiar. But to have them all in one place, along with his images that underscore his creative vision, is a real gift to photographers.

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Stuff I Watched

Best Movies

• Lee: This was an engrossing and highly cinematic movie. I liked how it conveyed the experiences that female photographers and journalists experienced during the time period and, also, communicated the toughness of Lee Miller and the harmful effects of being a war photographer more generally.
• Harry Benson: Shoot First: I thought this was a terrific documentary of Benson who has made a living capturing images of celebrities. The images are profound but, also, you walk away with a sense that he lacks much empathy for his subjects. The inclusion of those who love his work, and those who hate it, helps to communicate what a controversial figure Benson has been throughout his life and career.

Best YouTube Channels

• Paulie B: Almost certainly one of the most important American street photography channels, Paulie B has done a masterful job interviewing a range of photographers across the United States to understand what drives and inspires them. His episodes showcase photographers who may not be widely known, unpacks the creative processes of those he interviews, and also lets other street photographers really see how others work the streets. We’ve all heard about how the greats of the 1960s and 1970s worked; Paulie B is showing us how our American contemporaries move, think, and behave.
• James Popsys: James is a quiet and almost introspective photographer, which are not necessarily the traits that lend themselves well to YouTube. However, his thoughtful meditations on how and why he makes images, combined with the sheer beauty of his work, results in each video containing a gem that is worth treasuring.
• Photographic Eye: Some channels on YouTube focus on gear or technical methods of getting certain kinds of images. The Photographic Eye is not that. Instead, Alex Kilbee explains the intellectual processes of photography and speaks as a kind mentor or peer who is, also, working through his photography. I particularly like how he shares some of his own images so that viewers can appreciate the variety and intentionality behind image making.
• The Art of Photography: Ted Forbes has been running his channel for over sixteen years at this point and made videos on just about everything that you’d ever want to know about. I find his historical episodes that break down, and showcase, the great photographers as essential to my own photographic education. And his episodes that showcase viewers’ own projects have led me to finding a range of photographers and purchasing work from them.³

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Stuff I Subscribed To

Best Podcasts

• The Photowalk: I’ve been a supporter of the Photowalk for several years and it’s a regular joy and pleasure to hear Neale and his guests talk about the broader experiences of making images. The discussions rarely touch on gear and, instead, are centred around the ‘why’ of image making. Whenever I’m out on a weekly photo walk, I’m listening to Neale and recommend that you do the same.
• Frames Photography Podcast: Frames features photographers from across the different photographic genres. Many of the discussions are insightful for understanding what is behind different photographers’ creative processes, what motivates their projects, and how they work to express themselves to the broader world.
• Street Photography Magazine: Featuring street photographers from around the world, this podcast exposes how and why different people got into the genre, what they aim to present through their work, and the rationales underlying how they make their images. Many of the photographers who are interviewed talk about their recent, or ongoing, projects which serves to underscore the different ways in which projects are conceptualized and brought into the world.
• The Candid Frame: Conversations on Photography: Operating since 2006, The Candid Frame features photographers from all walks of life discussing the how and why of their image making. This is particularly useful, for me, in learning about photographers working in genres entirely different from street photography and learning how their thought processes can apply to my own photographic life.
• Street Life Podcast: This is one of the most recent additions to my list of podcasts and I’ve been enjoying every episode this year. It typically features photographers working in and around Australia and, aside from Houman Katoozi, I’m largely unfamiliar with folks working on that continent. The podcast often has a sense of friends talking amongst themselves about street photography and you’re just overhearing them as they joke with one another, talk about the Australian street photography community, and the challenges they’re facing in their own photographic activities.

Best Blogs/RSS Feeds

• GR Official: As an owner of a few Ricoh GRs I’m always curious about how others handle and experience the camera. This blog features a range of authors, with a diversity of photographic backgrounds and personal experiences, which means that each blog is a bit of a surprise: is this going to be a more reflective piece, a showcase of just a few images, thoughts on a piece of equipment, or…?
• Little Big Traveling Camera: I am always envious of how focused this photoblog is, how thoughtful the author is, and how well put together the images are. LBTC is, to my eye, the definition of what an excellent personal photoblog can be.
• Mobiography: I don’t take a large number of mobile phone photographs but I appreciate learning how such images can be made. If nothing else, it showcases just how can be done with phones of today (as well as those of a decade or more ago) in the hands of competent photographers.
• The Phoblographer: A regular publication that both showcases contemporary work while also engaging in some opinion and discussion about trends or issues in the photographic world.
• Ming Thein: I owe a lot of what I (think I) understand about photography to Ming’s blog. He shuttered it several years ago but has kept it alive / in archival mode. I hope that it never goes away given how helpful and insightful his writing is for new and more experienced photographers alike.
• Skinny Latte’s Creative Brain: I loved the photoessays that were published that exhibited gorgeous photography along with explanations and narratives to surround the images themselves. Sadly the photoblog has been left behind but the images and stories remain worth revisiting periodically.

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Hopes for the future

• Apple Photos: I just want it to reach parity with its Mac counterpart. We know that Apple has purchased Pixelmator and I’m hopeful that some of that DNA makes its way over to Photos.
• iPhone Camera app: I’ll be honest, the new iPhones’ ability to better control and develop custom JPG settings along with the adoption of JPG XL are very exciting and make me look forward to whenever I upgrade from my iPhone 14 Pro. However, I really wish that Apple would bring additional exposure metering to the iPhone and, in particular, highlight metering for my black and white images. While there are ways to get around this on the iPhone it’d be nice if it was something they could do by default.
• WordPress: I’ve been using WordPress for over 18 years at this point and it just seems to get more and more bloated. There are basic things that just don’t seem to be well developed, such as media management or the presentation of images, while a huge amount of effort has been put into turning WordPress into an enterprise CMS. I get that the company’s business is derived from its enterprise work but it’d be nice if basic features were also included in the priority product lists.
• Leica Q2 Thumb Grip: In a late end-of-year purchase, I’ve ordered the ‘official’ Q2 thumb grip to further improve on the ergonomics of the Q2. Here’s hoping that I end up happy with it!